My Road-trip Across America

I would consider Sabrina to be my best friend. We met senior year of high school and is one of the few people I still stay in contact with. Sabrina and I can talk about nothing for hours. All day, every day. I will shoot her a text or a Snapchat that will say the most random and insignificant thought I have ever had and she will respond within minutes, sending me back something just as weird and irrelevant to our everyday lives. She’s my best friend and I talk about her all the time, so its best you get to know her.

A few months ago I texted her “Let’s go on a road trip!” she responded, “Sure, want to drive across the United States?” I had only meant a quick weekend trip from San Diego to San Fransisco and back or something of the like, but her ambition intrigued me. Were both the type of people who love a challenge, and she needed some company to drive her car back home for the summer, so I agreed. We gave ourselves a week to do the drive, which meant planning for long days of driving and a few days of exploring the southern states on the route that we chose to travel.

Our plan was to leave our respective East Coast colleges and head south to Nashville, where we would spend two nights. From there we would travel to Austin and spend two nights as well. Finally, we would spend one night in Tucson and then head home to California. Our driving days would be brutal, almost all over 13 hours, but the days we spent getting to see new cities would be mostly walking and exploring, so we wouldn’t get too burnt out from driving such long distances.

I want to do individual posts on the cities that we got to see, but here are some of the highlights of our trip:

Spending hours on end with each other after being apart for so long

Listening to every song we’ve ever heard in our lives

Becoming really funnily delusional around hour 9 of each day of driving

Getting sunburns from inside our car, which has tinted windows

Sending countless pictures to our moms to prove we hadn’t died on the road

Having a quick panic attack because we thought we were going to run out of gas in the middle of Western Texas

Eating. Eating everything in sight (shoutout to Fig Newtons. you the real MVP)

about the author

I am a student at Dickinson College who lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania during the academic year and in sunny San Diego, California when I’m not in school. I spent the Fall of 2017 studying abroad in Málaga, Spain and traveling through Europe. Follow me for a peek into my world.